Live better and longer with The Fitzeness Show, hosted by fitness expert, author, and TV personality, Fitz Kohler. She'll tell you why diets are dumb, supplements are snake oil, and the truth about how you can earn a lean, hard, pain-free, and athletic body. Now for our favorite bossy blonde, Fitz Kohler. Music. It's a Fitzy Mini. It's so cute. Well, hi, team. I'm Fitz Kohler, your very bossy fitness pro from fitness.com. And welcome to the fitness show. It's a mini.
So cute. Just a taste of Fitz Kohler. That's all you're getting today. So I'm going to answer some questions for you because it's the right thing to do. That's right. You guys have been asking, so I might as well answer or I become a jerk. And nobody wants Nobody wants valid reasons to refer to Fitz Kohler as a jerk. Folks, if you haven't done so already, hit like and subscribe on the podcast. And if you're looking for regular, regular encouragement and some goal setting,
you got to go to my Hottie Body Fitsness Challenge page on Fitz or its group on Facebook. book. It's a wonderful group of 2,000 plus people who will encourage you to do your best when it comes to exercise and nutrition. And I give out challenges. That's right. I'm challenging you each month, something new, something fresh to get your body fitter, stronger, more flexible, increase your balance, all of those things. So join my group and let me harass you on the regular.
But question number one comes from Chrissy Bergeron-Lyons, who is one of my hotties. She says, how do I rank or how do you rank cardio with regard to effectiveness when losing weight? Is the elliptical or swimming as effective as running, for instance? So how do I rank cardio? That's a great question. It's certainly not one. It's not number one at all. So people think, oh, I want to lose weight. I have to go run. I have to go walk or swim.
And yeah, that's beneficial. But if you're trying to lose weight, there is no second place to watching what you put in your mouth. Your eating habits are paramount to the effort. And if you are not... Watching what you put in your mouth, there is no way you're going to lose the weight. In fact, I was just interacting with one of my neighbors who I love. She's been across the street from me forever. And she says, I need to start walking because I want to lose weight.
And I said, well, yeah, you need to start walking in general because exercise is good for you. But you want to lose weight. Walking is not going to be the catalyst for you to do that unless you're walking 20 miles a day, right? So the number one thing you can do is utilize the exact formula for weight loss. It's teaching you how to eat the right amount of the right food for the size you want to be. If you don't know what the exact formula is, well, I've got lots of resources for that.
You can go dig through Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you listen to the podcast and find a podcast called The Exact Formula for Weight Loss, or you can go to fitzness.com. That's F-I-T-Z-N-E-S-S.com. Right on the cover, there's a block that says exact formula. And you'll spend seven minutes reading it and you'll think, oh my gosh, it can't be that easy. And yeah, it is. So Chrissy, you know that, you know that, that the exact formula is the way to get the weight off.
But then I would say cardio and strength training are tied for their most value, value in your weight loss efforts. So cardio, sure, you can burn 600 calories an hour if you're running or swimming or doing the elliptical, to be honest with you. All of those exercises can be equal when it comes to calorie burn if you're working hard enough, right? There's level eight running. You know, you're running at a pace where you feel like, geez, this is really hard and I can only sustain this for a while.
That's level eight. Well, you can also be at level eight in the pool. Level eight on the elliptical, level eight on your bike. Sorry, my words are garbling, but you know what I'm saying? So you can burn calories, a lot of calories, doing almost anything if you're working vigorously enough. That's really what burns the calories is the vigorousness. So if you're doing cardio, you're burning calories right now. So that's instant calorie burn.
If you are strength training, you are burning calories, possibly not as much as if you're level eight running or level eight swimming. However, when you build muscle, you increase your metabolism. Dramatically, right? So if there's the stronger version of you and the weaker version of you, the twins, you're just sitting right next to each other. The stronger version of you is burning more calories just sitting there. And so strength training is an investment in so many things.
And that's why I'm always trying to beat, beat the strength training commitment into all of your little brains because it's so valuable. Not only is it creating a more powerful, strong body, but it's increasing your metabolism. So yes, you'll be leaner. People think I'm going to strength train. I'm going to get so big. Yeah. Only if you gather some sort of bodybuilding program, train like a beast and then eat like a beast to go with it.
Right. You have to put those things together. You just can't be a world-class bodybuilder without the effort. Just because you picked up a dumbbell doesn't mean you're going to have these huge muscles. It's not likely at all, but it's going to make your muscles stronger and maybe slightly bigger. And either way, your lean body mass percentage is going to increase, your fat mass is going to decrease, and you're going to be a calorie burning machine.
And so, yeah, you can burn a lot of calories doing cardio right now, but when you spend time strength training, it has this long lasting effect on calorie burns. So the most important thing when it comes to weight loss is your nutrition, your eating habits, your consumption, whatever you want to call it. That's number one. And then right behind it, side by side, cardio and strength, I think they're both equally valuable. Now, flexibility, yoga, so good for you.
Not, not, not at all a tactic for weight loss. If you ask me if someone wanted to go lose weight, I wouldn't say take some yoga classes. And then of course, balance training is so important, but it really isn't going to impact your weight. So, Food, cardio, strength training. Boom. There you go. Okay, next question. And we will be right back. Are you looking for the perfect gift for a loved one battling cancer?
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David Gehr. I love him. He's so great. We just had an episode dedicated to David's incredible comeback from sudden cardiac arrest. He says, should strength training be done before or after easy run days? He says usually his easy days are five to six miles. So this would be at least one and a half hours of running after an eight hour work day. David, really? If you have all of that, sure, you can strength train, but maybe you just want to do your strength training on a different day.
That's what my gut instinct tells me is if you're going to run Monday, Wednesday, Friday, okay, lift on Tuesday and Thursday. Maybe on all of those days, you do balance training. On all of those days, you do a killer stretching routine. But an hour and a half of running, I don't know if that's going to be just the wisest idea to do strength training. However... If you are going to do a six-mile run and strength training on the same day,
what I encourage you to do is do your priority first. So if you are trying desperately to pack on muscle or increase strength, you should do that first. Because if you run for an hour and a half first, you're going to be fatigued. You're not going to be able to put out the same amount of effort for strength training as if you did it on fresh legs, right? And if running is your first priority because you're training for a half marathon or whatever, we'll do that first.
But at this level, doing six miles of running, perhaps you just want to do your strength training on another day. Easy, right? My gosh. And then I have Dear Deb. Deb says she's lost a bit of weight and she needs to get rid of the fat wings and saggy skin. So she has an event coming up. Her son's getting married and she wants to look good. So continue to get to your ideal weight. I think you might be there already. Continue strength training. Saggy skin is tough.
I want you to know that saggy skin is tough. I believe Deb's lost about 100 pounds and that does wreak havoc on your skin. And so there's a chance you may not be able to undo that with exercise. I hate to tell anybody the only answer could be a plastic surgeon, but a saggy skin is tricky. The way to make your body just look better in general is strength training, right? If you want your body to be stronger and curvier and firmer, strength training.
Even if your skin is still looser than you'd like it to be, strength training will go a long way to help you get towards the look you're trying to achieve. So I hope that was. An answer that you can live with, Deb, and I love you. And I know, I know how committed you are. So keep up with your nutrition and then strength train, strength train, strength train. Does there seem to be a theme here? Yeah. I mean, folks, so many of you are committed to cardio and I love that.
It's so good for your heart and your lungs. And if you're running, it's great for your bone density and sure it's burning calories, but strength training is the fountain of youth. Strength training is the thing that's going to keep you vibrant and active in your present days and in your golden years. So please, please, please prioritize it. Join in my monthly fitness challenges because I'm throwing the hammer down on
strength training and people are seeing results. And so am I. I'm doing my own challenges and I like what I'm seeing. So join us, join us. Okay. Here are some softball questions I received. Number one, when's my next race that I'm running? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I actually saw a Spartan race coming to Ocala, Florida this coming weekend. So that's maybe. I love doing obstacle course races.
Honestly, I travel so much for race announcing that I don't really, I haven't built in any events into my calendar because I really just don't like leaving home. So much. I mean, I do like leaving home for work, but to also take off, to leave my almost 16-year-old dog, hey, not so good. So if I see something local pop up and I'm free, I'll dive in,
but I don't really have anything on my calendar at the moment. And then, Next question by a totally different person back to back was, what was my favorite marathon to run and my favorite marathon to announce? So my favorite marathon to run is the only marathon I've ever run, which is the Boston Marathon. That's right. My only marathon was the most iconic marathon in the world. And it was a great time. I had so much fun and I recorded a podcast about it.
It was October 21, but that was a really good time. It was hard for sure, but I didn't know any difference. Right. That was the only marathon I've ever done in 26.2 miles. It was tough, but awesome, but so awesome. And then what are my favorite marathons to announce? And that's like picking your kids, right? But I can tell you there's two that are really near and dear. Honestly, I can tell you why all of them are near and dear to my noisy little heart.
But number one is the OC Marathon in California. A, it's an epic event. It's huge, huge, huge Southern California, beach party vibes. It has all the bells, all the whistles, all the fun, all the bands. Everything a race announcer needs. And it was the first race of any sort I've ever announced. Gary Kutcher, that race director, gave me a chance in May of 2014. And thank goodness he did, because it spun off this wonderful component of my
career. So thank you, Gary. And OC Marathon is still one of my favorites every year. And then I got to tell you, the Donna National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer, I just left and. The description, I was just at a running conference called Running USA. It's where many of the race organizers from around America and beyond show up to share ideas and learn and yada, yada, yada. And I was able to tell my friends at Disney, that's right, Run Disney, they asked how the Donna was.
And I said, think about the most fun you've ever had at a Run Disney finish line. And they paused and they thought about it. I said, now multiply that fun and love by 20. And that's the Don of Mirathon. That's it. And I mean it. I mean it. I've never seen anything like it. It's just total love fest, total party.
And yeah, who doesn't want to be involved with that? Now I could go on and brag about all my other races, but I'm going to keep it short and sweet because it's a Fitzy Mini for crying out loud. Hey, I don't normally do this on Fitzy Minis, but I have to give you a song on the show because I really like this one. It's called Sports car by Tate McRae. And it's good. It's kind of fun. It's kind of sexy. And you should definitely listen to it while you are on the elliptical or while
you are playing badminton or water polo. That's right. Sports car. Maybe while you're driving your sports car too. But that's it. That's it. It's a Fitzy Mini. I promise I'm keeping it short and sweet. I love you. Get to work. Bye, team. And we will be right back. Do your hips, glutes, quads, and hamstrings need extra support while running?
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